There was an auction in my street last weekend, and I felt it was my civic duty to attend. Normally I would go anyway, because the sun was out, and I enjoy having a sticky beak as well as a chat with the neighbours. But there would be no socialising this time, for I was in full anti-racist mode and ready to kick the bejesus out of anyone I deemed intolerant.
Admittedly I do not normally associate auctions with racist gatherings. But as ABC 7.30 chief political correspondent Laura Tingle recently warned, Opposition Leader Peter Dutton has changed that for the worse by pledging in his budget reply speech to address the housing crisis through cutting permanent migration by 25 per cent over a two-year period.
His comments, Tingle told the Sydney Writers Festival last week, left her “sitting there with this terrible chill running through me”. Having segued from journalist to soothsayer, she expanded on this disturbing portent.
“I had this sudden flash of people turning up to try to rent a property or at an auction, and they look a bit different … and he has given a licence for them to be abused where people feel they are missing out,” she said. “We’re a racist country, let’s face it. We always have been and it’s very depressing and a terrible prospect for the next election.”
This is an appalling situation, yet the white saviour inside me was thrilled at the prospect of being seen to rescue the wretched. Maybe I could come up with a catchy hashtag on social media to let minorities know I would stand alongside them so they could bid without fear of retribution. #IllRealtorWithYou, perhaps?
I decided my strategy on the day. If I were lucky enough to chance upon a person of colour at the auction, I would immediately make myself known to them as an ally in the fight against white supremacy. All I intended asking in return was that they pose in a selfie with me which I would use to tell the world of my good deed.
But when I arrived, I was bewildered to discover there were minorities aplenty there. Moreover, none of them looked even remotely perturbed. The auction went ahead without incident, and the property was sold to an Asian bidder.
How could this be? For a moment I thought Tingle must have been bunging it on. But suddenly I felt this terrible chill running through me. You see, at every auction I have been to in my street, I run into a certain neighbour, RG, an India-born Australian. This time, however, he was absent, and there could be only one reason. Undoubtedly, the poor man was terrified that white bidders would beat him senseless if he ventured anywhere near the property. Are you happy now, Peter Dutton?
The best one could say of Tingle’s premonition is writers festivals have a tenuous relationship with reality and that she performed accordingly. The only person at risk of abuse at an Australian auction is the bloke turning up to one in Western Sydney while wearing a yarmulke.
As for her comments about Australia being a racist country, Tingle subsequently defended her remarks in an official ABC statement.
“I wasn’t saying every Australian is a racist,” she said.
Of course not. For example, Tingle would never consider herself to be racist. She would also have exempted her fellow panellists: Bridget Brennan (ABC), Amy Remeikis (Guardian Australia), Niki Savva (Nine newspapers), and host as well as ABC alumnus Barrie Cassidy. Likewise, her adoring audience would be deemed racist-free. So too would the entire ABC and everyone who loves the national broadcaster. And no doubt Tingle would exempt the 39.94 per cent of Australians who voted Yes in the Indigenous voice to parliament referendum.
As for where the racists can be found, that is straightforward. They feature heavily among the dreadful and ill-bred types who roll their eyes whenever the likes of Tingle lament the ignorance and prejudice of the masses.
Her insinuation that Dutton was fuelling racism earned Tingle a public reprimand from ABC News Director Justin Stevens, who said her comments “lacked the context, balance and supporting information of her work for the ABC”.
Predictably, there soon followed a caterwaul of indignation, including that from Race Discrimination Commissioner Giridharan Sivaraman. Writing in the Sydney Morning Herald, he demanded ABC chair Kim Williams and managing-director David Anderson “back” Tingle. “Why does our society have an aversion to talking about racism,” he asked.
For Sivaraman, the bigots are under the bed. We only talk about “overt racism,” he wrote. “We ignore the massive iceberg that lies underneath, the systemic and structural elements.” He wants to impose a “National Anti-Racism Framework” on “governments, business and civil society” which would “set benchmarks, with specific targets for different sectors”. As Editor-at-Large Paul Kelly observed, his approach mirrors that of critical race theory, the race grifters’ creed.
But like most commissarial windbags, Sivaraman is reticent when it comes to condemning the hateful rhetoric of the left. Take for example the genocidal pro-Palestinian slogan ‘from the river to the sea’. Asked last week at Senate estimates by Liberal senator Sarah Henderson whether he agreed with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese that the chant had no place in Australia, Sivaraman equivocated.
“We would have to look at the context of when it was made, how it was made and who it was made to, and without the context, I wouldn’t want to give a view on its implications under the Race Discrimination Act,” he said.
Context? Let me give you a hint, Giridharan Sivaraman. It is a call to arms by ideologues to wipe out a certain thing forever from a substantial portion of the Middle East. Is the target of their hatred (a) pink fairy armadillos (b) marauding polar bears, or (c) the state of Israel, along with every single Jewish man, woman and child? To paraphrase you, why do you have an aversion to talking about this form of racism?
Sivaraman further tried to weasel out of answering Henderson’s question by claiming doing so “could very well prejudice” the conciliation process overseen by the Australian Human Rights Commission (AHRC).
How convenient. Contrast that with what Sivaraman said just over two months ago. Interviewed by the Herald following his appointment, he superciliously dismissed the idea that white people could be subjected to racism.
“The notion of anti-white racism is based on a fundamental misunderstanding about racism,” he insisted. It “completely moves us away from the actual problems of structural and other forms of racism in this country”.
In effect that pronouncement extends blanket immunity, as far as the public perception of AHRC’s conciliation process goes, to anyone who discriminates against white people. What was that about you not wanting to prejudice the handling of complaints, Giridharan Sivaraman?
As for Tingle’s clarification regarding what she said during her appearance at the Sydney Writers Festival, she was clearly miffed when she explained in her official statement that her actions had “created the opportunity for yet another anti-ABC pile-on”.
This was “not helpful to me or to the ABC,” she said. “Or to the national debate.”
In that same statement, Tingle defended her claim that Australia has always been a racist country. It was made “in the context of a discussion about the political prospects ahead,” she said. “But we clearly have an issue with racism.”
Now contrast that with Tingle’s response last year regarding claims that the National Press Club had intentionally disadvantaged Shadow Indigenous Australians Minister Jacinta Nampijinpa Price in relegating her to a smaller room for her address during the voice campaign.
In denying the claims, Tingle said that any suggestion the timing or staging of the address was “in any way driven by racism or disrespect,” was “highly offensive to the club, and to me as its president”.
I do not suggest these allegations are true. Yet they are revealing in one respect. Tingle reacted strongly and defensively in denying accusations of racism against herself and her colleagues. Fair enough. Yet in her recent throwaway remark, she disparages this entire country, and by extension its citizens, by claiming it is inherently racist.
Complain all you will of a vendetta against the national broadcaster, Laura Tingle. But if there is one thing that ABC journalists and presenters revel in, it is an anti-Australia pile-on.
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